Future Tense
by Sekah
Summary: CREATED FOR THE YYH BIG BANG. When two points of time come into contact, and two enemies are thrown together, a certain fox begrudges a divine reminder of those he loved and lost. Heed Warnings.


There's beautiful artwork to accompany this story, by annajiejie on tumblr!

Thanks so much, annajiejie!

I'm so glad to have written this story. It's been so long since I wrote a fic, after all. It was nostalgic. Thank you so much for the experience YYH Big Bang.

WARNINGS: Child Abuse, Sexual Slavery, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Homophobia

* * *

Karasu twisted in a somersault to dodge a spring-loaded net, but he was too hungry to pull it off right. The edge caught him and he landed wrong, right on the steel bear trap he'd been trying to avoid. He was clubbed down. Bones and skin broke indiscriminately. Karasu swallowed his scream, about to blow off his leg, a lizard caught by a bird.

His muscles seized, pain prickling outward from a numbness in his back. He fell into an ungraceful heap, blood oozing from the exposed flesh of his leg. The slavers circled and kicked him, muttering.

"Fine boy," one said.

"How old is he? Eleven, twelve?"

"Has a nice kick," a man grumbled, nursing a bruised jaw.

"Toguro will want to see him. I've never seen someone with that power, other'n Lord Toguro's pet bird."

"Don't they kinda look alike? Could they be—?"

"You think our Princess kept it up long enough to impregnate a woman?" scoffed another.

Karasu twitched from his tazing, mouth frothing. He seized in the leaf-litter of the forest floor.

An uneasy mutter went around the circle.

* * *

Your past has a way of coming back to haunt you, and Kurama knew that quite well.

He reached up for a moment to adjust his collar. Yomi had offered to remove it, but Kurama wouldn't. Not until he was truly and legally free.

That discussion had been frustrating for his former subordinate. Yomi yelled. Kurama coolly offered to arrange him a meeting with a masseuse.

Today, Yomi had given Kurama an order: find and hire a suitable assistant.

Kurama had every intention to be petty, and buy him another slave.

It was about sending a message. It was about highlighting how he felt about Yomi's actions to Yomi. Even if it meant being on the buyer's side of the auction, the line drawn in the sand would be worth it.

The tinny voice of the pilot rang from the intercom. "Now arriving at the Point, sir."

Kurama smiled. The pilot had enough sense not to call their destination by its proper name in front of property. He could appreciate the diplomacy.

Slave Point was a ruined hunk of metal that orbited the Earth, a second moon, man made. Run by Sakyo and staffed by Toguro's men, it was no haven for him. He would be buying privately, mainly because memories of the stages made him retch.

The multitudes of people were easy to see through the glass walls of the dock, despite the flickering advertisements covering the windows washing the milieu in color.

Kurama was ferried into the bustling port in a ship the color of stolen onyx necklaces when he and Yomi were first setting out. Statecraft demanded a top-of-the-line cruiser like this. Kurama remembered the lamborghinis of the year 2000.

But that was more than five hundred years ago.

He thought of Yomi finding out where he was going and gritting his teeth.

New Year was marked tomorrow, Kurama knew. He smiled, the out-of-date proverb _out with the old, in with the new_ ringing in his ears like old-timey music.

* * *

Karasu's wrists were locked in manacles powered by an energy that felt and smelled like lightning.

He kept feeling a parody of his own energy licking at the edges of his peripheral sensing. It felt older, mature, twisted, but still him. He'd hidden from it. Karasu had enough experience with predatory ki like that to last ten lifetimes. He masked himself with effort. He could feel his empty stomach eating itself, but the lack of power to heal some of the bruising was worse.

He snapped to attention when the door slid open with a mechanical whir. The first to enter was an indecent slaver whose gut fell over the hem of his pants. The man who came in behind him was a wet dream of Karasu's. His mouth popped open, watching the redhead wide-eyed. He looked only a few years older than himself. Others turned to examine him, everyone transfixed by the sight of the young man, whose frosty voice made Karasu tilt his head to hear the melody better. "When I said someone who'd grow into the role, I did not mean a child, sir—"

The handsome stranger stopped, dead in his tracks. His eyes, scanning the room, were stuck on Karasu like the boy was a carnivorous plant and his attention a frog caught mid-jump. Karasu had the faintest inkling this man was not easily surprised. Karasu's open-mouthed gawp closed. He glared back.

Karasu had been in similar situations before. He'd seen men who his young heart had soared for before. Each had harmed him no less cruelly than the doughy slaver. In fact, the more fit and in shape the abuser was, the longer the pain lasted. You can't run when they can catch you.

"Is he to your liking, Mr. Kurama?" asked the slaver, building into a sales pitch. Kurama couldn't seem to retain the man's words, never looking away from the child.

Karasu ducked his head to drag his sweaty upper lip along his shoulder. He twined his fingers in the edges of his shoulder-length hair, fastidious as a cat. He hid in his fringe of black bangs and tried to ignore the man's scrutiny. He was aware of his ragged clothes and the scent of his sweat. The sun had risen on his face in the form of a shiny black eye, unhealed, like the marks of the bear trap. Karasu told himself he had no interest in even beautiful masters.

The owner of Karasu's energy raced down a corridor, drawn by the clear green of the redhead's aura. Something massive flared. Karasu could hear an argument starting nearby, the words indistinct, still too far away.

The man was quick on his feet, admirably smooth as he pulled himself together. "Is this some kind of trick?" the handsome stranger asked. He stood arrayed with his feet squared, waiting for his opponent.

Karasu glanced behind him, then squinted at the slaver. Who was there to fight here? Karasu could kill that bastard even chained like this.

The young man turned and stared in the direction of the two energies, the two voices whose words neither could make out.

He turned back to Karasu with his brows drawn down in a severe line. "What's your name?"

Karasu's violet eyes flicked up, burning into Kurama's with curiosity and an infinite misery, like a bird that grooms out its own feathers. His eyes slid down. His chin tucked, the black bangs falling into his face once more. "Beast," he muttered, his accent archaic dockside Rengar, half-swallowed. "Name's Beast."

He put his chin to his knees and hugged his legs, waiting for the mockery, the blow. He hated his name. Mother had dropped it like a load on his head. He wished he had the courage to assert his nickname, but Karasu was a secret he kept locked in his chest.

He hated mother too. He just hated, so much and with so much passion. He was nearing early adolescence but he looked weary as an old man—a lifetime of scant rations and never enough of anything could do that to you. He was all bravado, a budding tough guy, though in many ways he still smelled of the child he was leaving behind. He was undoubtedly pretty; his skin looked soft where the bones didn't nob. The slavers had noticed the attitude that would have to be broken for him to sell well.

"Beast?" Kurama asked. He looked him over with eyes green as new forest. "You don't seem like a beast to me, young man. Do you remember where you were before you were here?"

"I was crossing a portal to the human world with father—we were gonna visit Hangzhou. The portal was odd. Bright. I smelled rice cooking," he added helpfully. "In the portal."

Kurama's face got a look like he'd sucked a whole half of a lemon. He examined the boy, glanced to the side, and let out a fox's chuff. "I—" He looked down, tapping his foot. "I think—" he resumed, "—I think I would like to take you with me. Would you like that?"

Beast opened to the kindness like a flower, failing to perceive the test. He didn't trust the man, but to be, for once, considered unworthy of his name—he looked exactly like a starving, neglected bud given a skilled gardener's sudden needed attention.

"I'll come!" he shouted, and pulled upright, showing himself a tall and lanky boy for his age, even with the years of malnutrition, despite being half-grown and shorter than Kurama. "I'll come."

He held up his manacled wrists solemnly, showing the chains that bound him to a ring on the floor.

"Karasu," he said, nearly choking on the hope the name represented to him. A blush hit his pale skin like a sunrise. "I hate Beast. I like being called Karasu." Some of the syllables in the words were being dropped. It was still gutter drawl, marking him as a brothel brat, which he also hated. He didn't know any other way to speak.

The man's face narrowed into a sour, scrutinizing look. Still, he said, "I am Kurama." He turned his attention to the slaver. "Would fifty thousand cover it?" The fat seller immediately clasped his hands, exclaiming that _it would, yes sir_.

Beast couldn't breathe, scared this would be a dream. Fifty thousand. This man gave fifty thousand for Beast. It was an impossible number. He didn't know anyone had fifty thousand of anything. The redhead in his strict black outfit pressed his thumb to something the slaver brandished.

"Your transaction is complete," the slaver gleefully called after the suited man with his long red hair, who was already retreating.

Karasu was disappointed: he'd wanted to see 50,000 of something exchanged.

The manacles released. Karasu ran to catch up with his benefactor. As he did his wings burst from behind his back, in pure joy. They lifted his tatty shirt up and became tangled in the cloth, so he pulled his shirt off, for once not minding the scars, and ran ahead of the demon, babbling, talkative already, and not yet learned how to curb it.

"Sir, you won't regret this, you won't," he called, soaking up positive attention like a sponge, becoming full and dripping. The mania that would one day be an important facet of his personality was forming already, though he was not yet truly diseased of the mind.

Running backwards, he didn't even notice the figure behind him until he felt his own energy flair behind him. He whipped around. Kurama squared off again, his hand going up to his hair, as if to check it.

The sneer on the man's face when he first glanced at Beast fell away completely. For the second time that day, he was stared at, eyes bugging above an intricate iron mask. There was a muffled pop as the new man's mouth fell open.

"What in the hell—" he sputtered, looking as anyone would if they turned a corner and met the ghost of their past self. "What trick is this, Kurama? This can't be—" His eyes narrowed at the boy. "You think I'll be persuaded by some cheap copy?" He was scoffing, but the tall man's bravado made Beast think of the glittering salt they sold at the market, with rocks mixed into the nuggets to pad the weight.

"Funny," Kurama said, though he didn't sound amused. "I thought the same thing."

The masked man ignored him. "What do you think of sweets?" he asked, his voice muffled by the iron mask.

"I hate them," Beast, renamed Karasu, said warily, stepping rapidly back from the volatile man's rage.

Violet eyes flew wider. "Do you...how do you feel about people chewing?"

Beast squinted at the man, still sidling away. "I hate it, it's the worst. It reminds me of—." The last word was smothered by the adult's insistent hand. Both man and boy flinched.

"I—" the man began, but fell off, letting the child go and leaning into the wall with a thump.

Before the adult could respond, a massive shadow reached out and began dragging the man back by his shoulder. "Come on, Karasu."

Beast recognized him as Toguro, who had processed him.

"You knew," Karasu accused.

Toguro shrugged. The adult mirror of the boy hissed out, "Wait."

He looked at himself, down at his bare feet. Toguro, sensing his intention wasn't lust or mischief, let him go. Karasu's voice creaked.

"Boy, when you meet Linaeas, don't follow him. It doesn't matter that he's beautiful, and he was lying about loving you. You know pimp behavior, you should have pegged him the second you saw him. When you visit the shadow temples, don't try their drugs. They induce paranoia and you have enough of that without them. Kill Lysandre. Don't—" His eyes strayed to Kurama for a moment. "—practice stalking with the Youko Kurama. On the coast of the Abescene peninsula, in the fir trees with the bandits' camp nearby, don't let father go left to avoid. Turn back, it's a ruse, the bandits are waiting for you. Don't go left."

"And take this," he said, and reached to grab the boy's shying hand. He put a small baggie of powder in it from his back pocket. "Jinjeng powder, for the nightmares." He turned and walked away, his last words, "Works like a charm."

Toguro shrugged again, before following Karasu. "I think you just unmade yourself," Toguro told him.

"Shut up," Karasu snapped back.

Beast stared after him, stunned. He looked down at the powder in his hand. "I don't look the way I thought I would," he said. Kurama was the only person left in the hall, so he addressed his words to him. "I thought I would look happier than that," he muttered. "And stronger, and less of a ... flunky." the last word was said with a sad inflection, the boy curling a hand around his other self's present, his face making Kurama think of a fledgeling falling from a safe nest.

Kurama cocked his head, trying to puzzle the boy out. Beast couldn't guess what he was thinking.

Kurama raised his hand, and tilted up Karasu's chin. There was a full foot or more between their heights—Karasu had several growth spurts left.

Whatever he found in his face, he said, "We all have choices, Karasu." He seemed to be making one of his own. "You have a choice." It sounded to Karasu like he was saying _lucky you._ "Who you turn into is your business, your lifelong work. You don't have to recreate him. But if you do—" He sighed. "—it'll be on no one's head but yours." He dropped his chin like it burned him and walked back down the hall they'd stood in, footsteps dulled by the velvet carpet.

Karasu stared back at where he'd last seen his older self, thinking of choice. He had choices yet to make. Maybe he could stave off his own disaster. Kurama's words seemed in equal parts hope and recrimination: stirred a hope that he could be better, and sadness that he may not be anyway. At last, his feet began to move, taking him in the opposite direction, after Kurama's retreating form. He was pensive and quiet as they walked downwards, past checkpoints and guards who scanned Karasu's neck ring as he passed. He was only jerked from his thoughts and the baggie of white powder he was rubbing like a worry stone when they reached the bustling dock, and Yomi's ship hove into view.

The King's Landing was a state-of-the-art gilded cruiser, silver and black with tapered thrusters and working guns. Karasu began pacing around it, trying to figure out how it floated, before finally entering an opening doorway after Kurama.

Kurama's errand complete, the ship quickly pulled out, leaving the space station the way they'd come in. When the thrusters kicked to life in loud whirs and the ship took off, Karasu exclaimed multiple times and stayed glued to the window, his face pressed to the reinforced glass, forgetting his manners for a time. He saw the planet before him without recognizing it, the light pollution of the continents reflected in his eyes. Finally, he came back to Kurama's presence enough to stop gawping at the stars and black space dropping out on every side, the lonely lights of other ships buzzing into and out of the hive of Slave Point.

Instead, he turned back to Kurama, remembering he was a slave, and had been bought. He bowed deeply when he turned. The boy's face blanked. He still held his shirt, and when Kurama was turned away, he stripped the rest quickly, too nervous to make it a show. He knelt beside Kurama, a slave's place, which he had been beaten many times to learn to take as an underage hooker, and began folding his clothes like a good whore knows to do. No mess, no fuss, instead he knelt and asked Kurama—Kurama who he'd seen was an enemy of his adult form, Kurama who he was beginning to fear had bought him for revenge—with a quaver in his voice, audibly breaking with pubescence and fear, "What would you like of me, Master?"

Kurama turned, saw he was naked, and nearly slapped him, but softened when the boy twitched with his jolting hand. "Put those back on," he said. The sight of his enemy humiliating himself was unwanted and unsettling to Kurama. "I'll arrange for a pair of Makaian silk when we return. And don't call me Master. Our relationship is not that."

Karasu perked up, looking at Kurama with slit eyes. Makaian silk? His father dressed him in silks when he'd pleased him, long robes with sashes, miniatures of his own garb.

Karasu was overwhelmed, wondering how well Kurama knew his older self, that he knew of his fondness. It made him shy, bashful. Made him forget entirely about the protocol when someone thought they had power over him, which was to test boundaries until they appeared, hemming him in: find out what was allowed, and what was not, what was encouraged, and what was frowned upon, and what would earn the beating.

He dressed. As he did, he wondered what relationship Kurama had with him. He wondered why Kurama had looked at him with such disdain and hate. _Are we really enemies?_ he wondered. _And if so—why buy me?_

That dilemma lasted the rest of the silent trip.

True to his word, when they disembarked in Gandara Kurama ordered a servant to find a suit of makaian silk that could be tailored down to a boy's size. The man dutifully left to search for clothes, saying nothing of the difficulty of getting one's hand on silk clothes clothes in a boy's size on such short notice. Kurama turned away, but was stopped by Karasu's voice. "Wait, sir," he said, scuffing his feet. He scowled. "Can I have a bath?"

The first time he'd had a hot bath he'd hated it, but his father insisted he stay clean, and now he had rather a fondness for them. He didn't want to feel silks like he fingered in the market as a child when the tailor wasn't looking on his skin when he was still as dirty as this. They hadn't allowed him to soak, but had scrubbed him with cold water and rough sponges.

It would take more than that to feel clean. And Kurama had the means: Kurama could do it.

Kurama had the look of a man who wanted to dispense with a burden, but he agreed.

He told the boy to follow him, and Karasu did, still scowling. They were walking down a seemingly neverending hallway. Karasu kept opening his mouth to talk, garrulous at heart, but couldn't seem to think of anything to say. He danced on the edge of Kurama's stormy presence, staying out of reach of a grab or a hit. His eyes touched Kurama's moving body.

"How'd we meet?" Karasu said at last. He pinched his lips tight. The cold look Kurama gave him made him quail. He decided to retreat out of the range of a kick, as well as a strike.

"Brash," Kurama scolded.

Karasu fiddled.

After a tense moment, Kurama sighed. "I met you for the first time eight hundred years ago, child."

"I live to get this old?" Karasu crowed.

Kurama stopped and turned. Karasu, who had drifted in range of a kick, took two big steps back. Kurama drew in breath and let it out. "You do, at the expense of a great deal of things that were dearly important to me."

The stood like that, examining each other.

"I'm sorry," Karasu tried.

"No you're not." Kurama watched his face. "Don't lie to me, boy. It's not wise." He smiled, a snake's mouth curling as it consumed a bird's egg. "You are him, after all. You have the same tells when you're lying." Under Karasu's wary gaze, he continued. "When I met you, you were in late adolescence. Cocksure. Headstrong. Brazen. You still had your wings." A self-satisfied smirk crossed his lips. "Well. I took care of those for you." Chills swept down Karasu's spine, the parts of his back his wings came out of itching. "We met again," said Kurama. "You killed them. Or Toguro did. You killed Yusuke. You killed Hiei. You killed Kuwabara." He seemed to be searching for a familiarity with those names, for any hint of recognition. "You killed Keiko, and Shizuru, and then you killed Botan and Koenma. You killed my mother. You left Yukina and I alive, of course, in a manner. If you can call that living. Do you remember what you said to me, Beast?"

He turned and began to stalk up to the boy, compromising his well-kept space. Karasu backed up, but the hallway wasn't wide enough for it. He ended up with his side plastered to the wall, staring at Kurama with his small violet eyes almost round. Something about this man, who seemed only a few years older than Karasu, was shaking him down to his bones. Something about Kurama said to Karasu that if he did kill him, Karasu wouldn't be the first child he'd executed in his life.

"Stop," Karasu whispered.

"Stop? Has anyone said that to you yet?" Karasu's mind flashed to children of the brothel he'd terrorized, whose hair he'd pulled, whose flesh he'd clawed, whose toys he'd broken. He remembered the boy whose grandfather had owned his mother's cathouse. He'd scarred him. He'd been scarred in return, and confined. _The straw tick. The chains. The sign._ His eyes widened with guilt and fear. "I see that look. That's no innocent child's look. Have you raped already, this young?"

Karasu swiped his purple nails at Kurama, trying to ward him off. Kurama grabbed his wrist and pulled him forward. He leaned over him and inhaled.

"Why're you smelling me," shrieked Karasu. He tried to claw at Kurama's restraining hand, but quicker than thought, his second wrist was grabbed.

Karasu was scared to strike out. His heels scrabbled as he tried to pull himself from Kurama's grasp. Kurama let him pull.

"You're terrified. I can smell it. Good. Well?" he asked him.

"Well _what?"_ he cried.

"Have you raped already?" Kurama asked.

"No!"

"Look at me. Say it and look at me."

"Please—"

"If you don't say it, or I'm not satisfied, I'll have no choice but to castrate you."

Beast curled up around his middle. "Don't geld me!" he shrieked. "I ain't an animal, I ain't an ox!"

"A dog can be castrated as a puppy. They say it reduces aggression. Make no mistake, Karasu. Look at me and tell me. If you haven't, and you're not lying, I'll let you go." Karasu had never imagined hearing his real name said with such hatred and disdain. Beast, sure. But not Karasu. Not the name he kept in his secret heart. He burst into tears.

But he'd been a whore. He knew how to work through tears.

Besides. He hadn't. He hadn't raped, anyway. He'd clawed them and pulled their hair. He'd broken their toys. At this early age he'd already killed.

But he'd never raped.

"I never did, I never raped _anyone,_ " he sobbed out. "Let me go, please, God."

He pulled so hard that when Kurama released his wrists, he collapsed on the ground. He wept while sprawled, his face snarled with hurt. It was strange to realize Kurama was panting too, pressing a hand to his chest to ease his rushing breath.

"Chilling," a smooth voice said from behind the two. Kurama's breathing slowed. He stood up straight. "It's good to know you haven't changed too much. Who exactly is this child?" The man prowled close, eyes closed, but his nose twitching. The scars were a delicate latticework above his cheeks. _He's blind,_ Karasu realized, scrubbing his cheeks and having a harder time calming. "Kurama—" To hear a normal language come out of the statue of his face was odd.

"Yomi," Kurama interrupted. He smiled. "This is Karasu. Your new assistant."

Yomi's frown deepened. "Kurama—"

"—A slave, for you to bully."

"—Kurama, you know I have no use for a child slave—"

"Why not? He's unbroken, and perfect for you. You've always preferred a little fight."

"Kurama, I asked for a secretary, not a bed slave—"

"Oh? You'd take one as young as this to bed?"

"Can he even read?"

"You'll love his name. It's Bea—OOF."

Showing previously unheard of speed, Beast kicked out Kurama's legs. Kurama, now on the ground, sat up and watched Karasu jump up and then back, clinging to the ceiling and the wall's crown mouldings, like a spider about to drop, hissing down at them both. A flicker in the air showed Kurama that a bomb was coming nearby, but Yomi reached out and closed his hands on the empty air. There was a harmless combustion and a small bang.

"I hate you. I'll kill you!" the boy was screaming. His voice wasn't drawing guards yet. He was still crying, and his hand slipped on the carving, dragging splintered rents in the white-painted wood. Chips rained down. He rubbed his squinched-up face on his shoulder, smearing dirt and grease in both directions, more rubbing onto his face, and some rubbing from his face into his shirt.

He was still shaking.

Yomi hesitated. "He seems so young," he said.

"Is a baby adder any less a snake?" Kurama asked, in stark opposition to what he'd told Karasu earlier. Karasu began to cry so hard his foot slipped, and he let it dangle. The hope for his future he'd been feeling was precious and small and its absence in his chest was a physical ache, like something had been torn from inside him, and was bleeding.

"Which of your mothers do you think you're echoing when you say that?"

The silence after that statement only made Karasu's hiccups more profound.

"What do you know of my mother?" asked Kurama. His voice was so cold Karasu stopped crying aloud, stilling completely, a crow before an eagle.

"Only what Yukina's told me, mixed with what I know of you before your death." There was something unsure in Yomi's voice. Though Karasu could tell nothing Kurama did would wound Yomi, he seemed to be picking his words carefully. "I know your birth mother very well, of course. Your human mother—from what Yukina has told me—I do not know that she would approve of the idea that a boy who's done terrible things couldn't change."

"We'll never know," Kurama husked. He stared up at Karasu, his expression unreadable. "He killed her."

"From the way you've been interacting, I don't get the sense that this is him, exactly."

"Creating Shura has made you soft."

"Having Shura in my life has taught me more than I can say."

"Then perhaps you should strive for some humility."

Yomi stared at him, his lips drawing back from his teeth. "Some what?"

"No, I—" He held up his hand to restrain Yomi's tirade. "—I see your point. I understand." The air seemed thick with electricity. Something in Kurama's expression had changed. At last, he said, "Come down from there." He pitched his voice to carry to Karasu. "You're in no more danger from me."

"Fuck you." Karasu chewed on the words. He swung like a monkey and ripped out part of the crowning to throw it at Kurama, pure ornery prepubescent ire. Kurama knocked it aside.

"I meant it."

"I did too!" called Karasu. "You're fucking crazy. You're worse than Ma! Nobody ever heard my name without laughing, without saying it was appropriate. Sometimes the Johns complimented my mother on foreseeing who I'd be when I got older. Father calls me Karasu, but when he's cut the poppy brick it's _Beast, let me touch you,_ and you said I didn't look like one and then you were gonna maim me like a bull-calf! For something I ain't even _done!"_ Karasu was hopped up on the injustice of it.

He swung further down the wall and tugged out another hunk of crowning. He hurled the projectile at Kurama's head. Kurama knocked it aside with infuriating ease. "I hate you!" Karasu cried.

"Karasu," Kurama asked, "do you want something to eat?" Karasu's grip slipped. "Let's talk about this over some food. Would you like a bath?"

"No! I don't, I'm staying up here!"

Kurama walked away, leaving Yomi standing in the hall.

Yomi frowned after him. He retreated after a moment.

Karasu hung up there for a while, and had time to think. To think about lies, and how Kurama had lied to him. To think about what might be done to him. To think about how his other self had to have had an inkling things would be violent if he left Karasu in a hated enemy's hands, and he'd still turned and walked away.

To think about being alone behind enemy lines.

His muscles seized from remaining up there for half an hour. He was still bruised up and tired and so hungry.

Oh, he was so _hungry_.

Footsteps echoed back down the hallway. He tensed.

Kurama appeared, but Karasu was less concerned with that than with the smell coming from the multi-layered lacquered trays balanced in his hands, black with curlicues of vines embossed into them.

"They were intending to break you so they could sell you," Kurama told Karasu. "Before the slave breakers come for them, they never feed them. You're hungry, yes?"

Karasu cringed, but he said nothing. The look on his face spoke for him. He'd been hungry before. He wouldn't trust an enemy to feed him food that wasn't spiked.

"Come down. I'll eat anything you point out to me. That way you'll know I haven't poisoned any of it."

Kurama started unstacking the trays without looking at Karasu. For a moment, it almost didn't work.

Karasu let go and dropped down. He inched closer over the red antique carpets. Kurama watched him when he was close enough that Kurama was in danger of Karasu attacking him out of cowardice. He still unpacked the food with deft hands.

Karasu swallowed. Wordlessly, he pointed at a meatbun. Kurama took a hearty bite out of one side. Karasu pointed to the other side of it, licking his lips. Kurama took a smaller bite out of the white dough and the fried meat inside. Karasu swallowed, watching Kurama's throat work so it was definitely inside him. He snatched the rest out of Kurama's fingers.

He ate almost without breathing, shoveling the sweet pastry into his mouth. A few tears leaked out of his eyes. He sucked the grease from his fingers. "It's so good," he groaned, "it's so good."

He pointed out some soup, and Kurama half-drained it, to prove that there was nothing in there but mushroom broth, nothing diluted.

Karasu practically inhaled the second half.

They went through the whole tray like that, with frequent times when Kurama cautioned Karasu to pause, breathe, and eat slowly. Other than that, they didn't speak.

When Karasu was full, he curled into a corner and began to cry.

"I haven't poisoned you," Kurama said. "The food was too rich."

"I know," Karasu gasped, tears itching his violet eyes. "I know how this feels."

"You went hungry often?" asked Kurama.

Karasu responded, "Yes."

"Tell me about the scars," Kurama said. Karasu's whole face changed. "You have them now. You had them then, too. They never faded. But it always looked like you grew around them."

"Yes," said Beast. His lips pulled down in a scowl. "Mother's pimp did it. When I scarred his grandson. The little snot went right to him and I was pulled from my mother's house. Ma watched. His mother was stroking him and fussing like he were a goddamn kitten. Mine just watched. But for me, it only—"

"It hurt?"

Karasu looked at him whale-eyed, the whites showing around his iris. "Yes," he said. "Father took me from there, a few weeks ago."

"I see," said Kurama. He seemed as reluctant to give sympathy as Karasu was to receive it. "When you can walk, I'll show you where you can bathe."

After that, the two demons talked. There were long silences, and hesitations. Their discussion ranged over broad topics, big topics, some of them so large they expanded past a child's understanding. Whenever he realized that the boy was becoming confused, Kurama pulled back and made the discussion more concrete.

Hours later, after Karasu had gotten hungry again and picked at the food once more, a tailor came by and delivered several sets of boy's clothes made of Makaian silk. The tentative truce continued into the bathing room. Kurama stood outside. They talked through the door.

When Karasu came out stifling a yawn that showed all the way to the back of his throat, Kurama took him to a guest room. Karasu exclaimed so thoughtlessly that Kurama pulled back the corner of the covers and helped him into bed.

Karasu eyed Kurama, half expecting a rape. He found himself watching the man's back as he swept out of the room. The covers were soft and smelled like sweet flowers. Karasu burrowed into them.

Karasu, who'd been an insomniac all his life, pulled the smooth baggie of jinjeng powder from his pants pocket. Unsure how it worked, he snorted it like a drug. His muscles relaxed immediately.

He'd never had a more restful night's sleep.

The form of Karasu's days changed. He entered classes with private tutors. At night, Yomi, Kurama, and sometimes Shura slowly incorporated him into their lives. He was no longer viewed or treated as a cuckoo in another bird's nest.

Weeks passed, then months. Time turned to years.

He started to learn boundaries. In his now pleasant sleeps, a person appeared and told him their name was Inari. They told Karasu he was blessed. They told him that his mission was to teach the Youko Kurama something that was always lost by the morning, but felt like understanding. Karasu was confused by that: he was coming to realize that Kurama understood better than anyone else he was ever known. Kurama was a learned man, a wise man. Karasu scoffed in the mornings, knowing he had nothing to teach Kurama.

The dreams always smelled like cooked rice.

* * *

Kurama weaved through the tables of the outdoor café with purpose. He knew this man's routine, through long force of habit.

"Hello, lovely," Karasu purred, delighted to see Kurama so suddenly. He watched the slim-waisted redhead slid into the seat across from him. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Kurama smiled. "I'm here for a Linaeas."

There was a stiff moment on the part of the man, who paused with the teacup halfway to his unmasked mouth.

"Oh?" he asked, over his rising pulse, the scarlet seeping into his eyes. "I'm afraid he's dead. Would you like me to take a number?"

"Oh no, _Popinjay_." He examined Karasu's stiffened posture. "I wonder what it must have been like, to be so unwanted. To be valued so little. To think you're finally free, and then to be made the peon of a man like Toguro, and be unable to break out of your own power. It must have been maddening."

"Listen here, you little bitch—"

"Your other self is thriving," he told him. "He becomes less like you every day. I'm not here to gloat," he mused. He pulled down his shirt and showed the imprint where the slave collar used to be, now gone. "I'm here to talk. Man to man, equal to equal, about everything you took from me. About everything you ruined inside of me." He sighed. "I'm here to tell you that finally, I have no more hatred. Only pity, Karasu. I pity you."

The thunderous expression on Karasu's face shuttered, a look of pure venom crossing it.

He hated to arouse pity. He always had.

"I should have killed the little brat," he snarled.

"You should kill yourself. That's true. In fact, I'm going to give you the chance. Toguro is coming here now. Sakyo knows you've been double-dealing. He's been informed that the armies of Gandara ask for the death of one man to quench their blood lust. I believe his exact response was, 'good riddance.'"

"Toguro won't kill me," Karasu demurred.

"Won't I?" asked the big man. He stood behind Karasu now, an immovable mountain.

"Time's up," said Kurama. "Goodnight, Popinjay."

He reached out and caressed the crow's arm as Karasu tried to stand hastily but was lowered back into his seat by the force of Toguro's paw on his shoulder.

Kurama didn't stay to watch his death. He viewed the corpse later, when it was delivered to Gandara.

The very next day, the young boy Karasu disappeared into a portal.

For hundreds of years, Kurama had held onto his hatred, his bitterness, his loss.

It was strange that the one who helped him ease that was the very boy who grew into the man who hurt him.

Five hundred years after the death of Yusuke Urameshi, the worlds were changed. They would be unrecognizable to the human boy. In many ways, they were unrecognizable to Kurama.

He remembered Beast, and held onto his hope for change. He held onto his hope that a boy could make his life better, nobler—than Kurama's had been.


End file.
